


the scene that comes after the credits roll and the lights go out

by earlybloomingparentheses



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Happy Ending, Love, M/M, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), References to Peggy Carter, References to consensual non-monogamy, Spoilers for Endgame, also bittersweet, sort of a fix-it but only sort of because this happened and no one can tell me otherwise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-30
Updated: 2019-04-30
Packaged: 2020-02-10 13:12:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18661111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/earlybloomingparentheses/pseuds/earlybloomingparentheses
Summary: After Sam walks away, Bucky sits down next to Steve.





	the scene that comes after the credits roll and the lights go out

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sure there are many other folks who saw Endgame and, weeping softly, immediately wrote this scene in their heads. I love love love Peggy Carter and I think Bucky loves that she makes Steve happy. There's no reason they can't all get happy endings. No reason Bucky has to stay leaning against that tree, watching Steve from far away.
> 
> NO REASON AT ALL, MARVEL.

The sun glints off Captain America’s shield as Sam turns away from the bench and walks back toward Bucky. His wide eyes are filled with the sort of awe one reserves for cathedrals and mountaintops and the visitations of gods. His shoulders are squared, chin a little higher. He holds the shield with a mixture of reverence and pride and Bucky can tell that soon it will rest as naturally in his hand as if it has always been there. Sam was the right choice, Bucky thinks; Steve always makes the right choice.

Sam clasps Bucky briefly, tightly, by the shoulder. Bucky gives him a nod. Understanding passes between them, the wordless communion between two men who have grown closer in the face of danger and disaster than either could have anticipated. Sam walks away, back to Bruce, and Bucky looks over at the back of the man on the bench, the man with slightly stooped shoulders and an almost military erectness to his posture.

Bucky walks over.

“Hey, Steve.” 

“Hey, Buck.” 

Bucky sits. Steve’s hands are marked with liver spots and his face is a creased map of wrinkles, his cheeks a little drawn, his frame a little sunken. But his blue eyes are clear and bright. 

“Am I still handsome?” he asks, with half a smile. 

Bucky shrugs a shoulder. “You were never all that handsome to begin with.”

Steve laughs. The sound is lighter than Bucky remembers. There is sadness at its edges, but it’s a gentle rounded sadness, the sadness of a man who has lived a full life and knows that someday he, like those he has loved, will leave it. The grimness, the resignation, that Bucky knows so well from Steve’s last few years before the snap, had found so painful each time Steve visited him in Wakanda, is gone. 

“How’s Peggy?”

Steve looks down at his hands. “She was good. Right up till the end.” He looks at Bucky. “She told me to tell you hello.”

Bucky nods. A long silence stretches on. Over the lake, a bird calls. Somewhere on the other side, another one answers.

“How stupid would it be to say I missed you?” Bucky asks softly. He would never have said it before the snap. Almost doesn’t say it now. He knows that he only had to wait five seconds for Steve to return. Just five. But he had known, because Steve had told him what he was going to do once he had finished returning the stones, because they had agreed on it the night before as Steve ran his fingers through Bucky’s hair and asked him if he would really be all right, how much longer it would be for Steve. And so each of those five seconds had ticked out an eternity.

“Not stupid at all,” Steve says.

Another silence. Then, Bucky, with a certain measure of difficulty: “This was the last time, right?”

Steve looks at him, and his hand finds Bucky’s. It feels unfamiliar: thinner, lighter, like Steve’s bones have hollowed out a little bit. Bucky squeezes it tight. 

“Yes,” he says softly. “I promise, Buck. Neither of us is going anywhere ever again.” 

One day the serum will run its course for both of them, and then they will both be gone. Sooner for Steve, probably, than Bucky. But not, if they are lucky, for a long, long time. 

Bucky raises his hand to Steve’s lined face and strokes his cheek. He loved the skinny, scrappy, sick Steve from Brooklyn; he loved the fresh-faced muscled soldier and the haunted, ever-serious fugitive he knew after his own rescue. Loves them still, all of them, all the versions of Steve he has ever known. All the memories and pictures he has wrested back from the depths of his broken brain. He loves this Steve, too, this aging man with crow’s feet and graying hair. 

Bucky kisses him. Steve kisses back. He tastes the same as he ever has. Tastes like home.

“Till the end of the line,” Steve says softly. “Didn’t I always tell you?”

And he did. He always did.


End file.
